on 14-Jun-2011 13:40
Over the last 10 years, there have been a lot of discussions about the depletion of IPv4 addresses. With development of the IPv6 standards, general consensus is that the Internet will eventually transition to IPv6. The real question has been “When will this transition take place?”
For Communication Service Providers (CSP), increases in data usage and IP devices have caused industry standard’s bodies (such as 3GPP, TiSpan, 3GPP2 and CDG) to incorporate IPv6 in their high speed network architectures. This has caused CSP’s to include transition to IPv6 as part of their 4G and advanced network rollouts. The challenge is that with the majority of the Internet still being on IPv4, how is the best way to still give subscribers access to the content that they want and demand. So for the CSP’s, the question now is not when but how to transition to IPv6.
There are several articles, blogs and discussions on the Internet about the different methods of transitioning to IPv6. Instead of re-hashing this information, I want to concentrate on the pros vs. cons of a few of the more prevalent methods.
These methods are not always independent and all inclusive. For example, if a CSP has a Quad Play offering (TV, Phone, Internet, and Wireless), DS-Lite may be a good solution for TV (Cable set top box) while still using an IPv6 Gateway, DNS64 and NAT64, and Dual Stack for other offering and systems. This architecture allows for a complete migration to an IPv6 offering while still supporting existing set top boxes at the customer locations.
The ultimate challenge is for CSP’s to migrate to IPv6 with as little impact to the subscriber experience. The method chosen by CSP’s needs to be able to migrate to IPv6 and still support current IPv4 content and applications, and this needs to be done seamlessly to the subscribers.
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